 friends I'm so glad to be with you finally this morning to be with you in worship after some flight delays yesterday but as we begin our session this morning I want to invite you to stand with me and as we are want to do every time God's people gather we are reminded yet again that our lives and our whole beings are offered in worship and in praise to God a simple song that simply reminds us that every praise somebody say every praise tell your neighbors say every praise belongs to God it doesn't belong to me it doesn't belong to you it belongs to God let us sing every praise is to our God every presence here I want to again thank I think the Andre the wonderful worship we had last evening I'll keep talking about that but I thought it was a fabulous experience and that was the gifts of so many people but to appreciate the Andre's leadership on that and that the leadership happens before we actually get in the room they don't just throw this stuff together as you know and months of work went on that so appreciate that so I'm gonna ask Andrew Beard who is our campus pastor minister at the Wesley at Southern Methodist University to come and to pray for us this morning Andrew great mighty and gracious God thank you for today God we thank you for the blessing it is to have another day to live to love God we are grateful for the life that we have for the breath that we breathe for the redemption that we experience God as we gather together I pray that you bless this space bless all of us that are here God as we conference together God let us be sensitive to your spirit let us hear your voice calling us let us see others in the world as you see others in the world let our heart break for what breaks yours God let your spirit be so palpable in this place that we may have wisdom and guidance that can only be divine God we pray all these things in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen thank you Andrew so dr. Clayton elephant who's the pastor I want the pastors the senior pastor at First Yamath Church of Richardson is our host he was unable to be with us last evening because Grant graduated from high school and Clayton thought it was more important to be there than here that's three and done yeah but he's going to college you don't know what done is or you forget I've been I'm done yeah Bishop members of the annual conference we welcome you to First Richardson we're so glad to have you here we're excited to be hosting we were hosting a couple of years ago and some of our members got together after we hosted the last time and said you know we could do a better job hosting if we just build a whole new building for the conference we wouldn't have to have a tent out there and we could just do a better job of hosting so that you're the entire reason we built our new Ministry Center and so welcome we we do want to welcome you and we just ask you if you need anything if you need directions if you need information there are people with those blue teal shirts all around the campus if you see one of those they are there to ask if they don't know the answer they'll point you to the person who does so we encourage you to find them and and they will they will direct you where you need to go let me tell you about a special opportunity this afternoon at five o'clock for those who would like to do this right before dinner there's about a fifteen minute tour of our garden ministry and I just tell you that this is an exciting thing there's an information in your packet about this but our community garden provides over a thousand pounds of produce every year to to our local food pantry it's one of the most vibrant exciting ministries and it's just a way that we're connecting with our community and staying really engaged with our community and I just want to commend you to it it's a great opportunity to learn more about how to start one of these at your church again welcome we're so glad you're here thank you Clayton let's thank first Richardson which will do again and again and again and we also appreciate the building the new building for our use Clayton thank you nothing's good enough nothing's too good for the north Texas conference so thank you for that we appreciate it very much so word and this is a good time for me to say this remember that we are guests and in their home and one of the things that I like I will remind you throughout the day and tomorrow is is that you need to pick up after yourself in here we found this the first year especially on Monday to get ready for the ordination service everybody think you've claimed your place for the whole week you've not so you need to take everything with you and when we leave this afternoon also pick up trash and so that we make this easier because we'll be turning the room several times and that's important again so say word of appreciation to the persons who are acting as our host the ones wearing teal shirts that can be helpful to you and remember they're here to be helpful and so let's express appreciation to them as we see them and we move through the day we're going to organize the conference before we move into a worship experience and then and we'll do that so Judith Reedy who is the secretary of the annual conference will help us move through through the organization of the conference so Judith Bishop I move that the bar of the conference be established as this chancel area and the entire floor of the sanctuary at first United Methodist Church Richardson and that the visitor section be established as the balcony of this sanctuary so that's before you I want to remind you that means everyone who is seated on the floor is a layer clergy member of the annual conference if you're a layer clergy member of the annual conference and you're seated in the balcony and you know I won't recognize you for speech you'll be unable to vote from up there so if you want to vote and participate you need to be on the floor all of the guests will be in the balcony and that way as we take votes we're clear about who is who so this is before you if you'll approve that will you raise your hand thank you it's done bishop I move the election of persons to serve the 2017 business session is assistant secretaries be Adam White, Kenny Dixon and Marsha Middleton and that Dritha Burris be head teller and the teller group serve as appointed by each of the district's superintendents okay this is before you in terms of our assistant secretaries our teller and the assistant tellers as well if you will affirm that will you raise your hand thank you if you oppose you don't want to oppose that so that's done bishop I move the approval of legislative item number one in our conference workbook on page 16 for equalization of clergy and laity okay that is before you is in the pre conference material all those in favor of that will you raise your hand thank you oppose raise your hand it's done I have some announcements to make that are important to all of you and that's the location of the restrooms to our side back in the back and then some along the concourse as well the snack bars are located in the Shover ministry center coffee is located there as well as in the beverage center on the side of the sanctuary and donations are appreciated the sole purpose cafe offers uh... fancy coffee selections for purchase this morning bishop oden is in the shover welcome center for his book signing and finally uh... please remember to sign in with your district uh... superintendents admin and at this time pull out this lavender card from your book this will be used for the upcoming service each each package should have this thank you so and todd standing rules thirty-odd was i knew i'd seen you and then i lost good morning members of the annual conference and uh... uh... today i'm bringing the report from the standing rules committee and this is the legislative item two and three we will be referring to legislative item two uh... is brought to you uh... from the conference nominating committee on the background the proposed change is a request from the conference nominating committee to provide additional conference-wide representation to the committee as well as selecting a chair at large within the conference to provide the most effective leadership with that being said it is to uh... have the assistant of the bishop to serve as the chair so the change is in the standing rules that is paragraph two which reads the conference nominating committee is comprised and will take out the chair of the committee the assistant to the bishop and add who shall serve as chair the conference lay leader who shall serve as the vice chair the conference lay leader elect the district superintendents and one at large lay member from each district to be nominated by the district and elected by the annual conference in accordance with that then in the third paragraph they will win we will remove the portion of the last sentence with the at-large lay member and removing the chair of that particular sentence uh... bishop i present that as uh... proposal and we're gonna vote now right we're gonna vote now okay this is before you are there any questions okay i think you're ready to vote though all the yes you have to come to a mind clara st loupe community if i'm reading this correctly this would be calm the chair would become an appointed position and here to for it has always been an elective uh... com uh... position headed by a late person rather than a clergy person so i would like to understand that the reason for diminishing the role of the laity i cannot tell you uh... all the things that is from the nominating committee they would need to present their part what they uh... are asking for jeff booze microphone c uh... jeff booze conference lay leader uh... to explain the background of this we actually uh... in the past the chair has been uh... someone on staff in the conference we change the standing rules when we changed the strategic plan uh... and the restructuring of the conference a few years ago uh... by putting it as the conference lay leader we also then discovered we are actually the only conference in the south central jurisdiction and perhaps all of the methodism uh... where the conference lay leader was the chair uh... and it simply was just too much work uh... so we have realized over the years we tweaked it last year a little bit trying to change it we realized we needed to tweak it a little more uh... to give someone who is in the office and has a full-time staff uh... the ability to work on that we also that you'll notice though the chair of the committee is the lay leader and the lay leader elect is always also in the committee uh... as well as the ds's and multiple representatives from the districts so i think the balance is still the same as far as lay and clergy uh... might be off by one i'm not sure go back and look uh... but the main intent was that was really only people who could share the committee need to have that as a full-time job or to be retired and we didn't want to do that to our lady that's the reason well again i i obviously something that i'd challenge because i do think it reduces the the role uh... and the presence and power act actually of the laity i do observe that you said that the proposal is that the appointed person who is uh... the assistant to the bishop becomes the chair and then we have a vice chair who is laity but uh... again i would uh... challenges from of the uh... perspective of the opportunities for a broad number of persons to have that it is a very select group that ever becomes the assistant to the bishop and that would eliminate enlarge measure women and minorities to this point in our history that's a speech against does anybody else want to speak i think that means you're ready to vote are you going to speak serena did you want to speak serena agart faith u m c and current chair and layperson of this committee i can speak to the fact that it is indeed an inordinate amount of work for a layperson in a volunteer capacity uh... the work of the committee is very collaborative and i would uh... only assume that that would continue to be so so i would fully support this amendment so this is before you are there any other speeches and i assume you're ready to vote all those in favor of the rule changes in uh... legislative item number two will you raise your hand thank you those who are posed raise your hand this passes then legislative item number three uh... the background on that particular one is the proposed change is request from the conference nominating committee to remove the courtesy and resolutions committee from the standing rules the task of this committee has been absorbed by the annual conference planning team in doing that then it would refer to the standing rule robert number one the seven c in which the courtesy and resolutions committee and the paragraph with it would be removed in doing that lettering for the commission on our cars and history would be c and standing rules would be and uh... bishop present that as for a vote okay this comes from the stand committee on standing rules before you properly are there any questions there any speeches you're ready to vote i assume looking at the house you are ready to vote all those in favor will you raise your hand thank you all those opposed raise your hand it passes unanimously concludes the report thank you and i let's give thanks and her committee larry george the assistant bishop present the consent calendar is a key in members of the annual conference on page seven of the conference workbook you'll find the preliminary consent calendar i would remind you that as a the items that appear on the consent calendar are those matters of a legislative item which are only reporting in nature which do not have financial implications beyond anything that's already included in budgetary recommendations that will be before the conference and do not affect the conference rules preliminary consent calendar is before you it will be voted on tomorrow afternoon if you should see an item on that calendar that you wish to have removed please note that on page six you're told the process for doing so to remove an item you must present to the conference secretary that request in writing signed by five annual conference members and it must be submitted within twenty four hours which means revenue to three needs to receive it by eight thirty tomorrow morning this is a matter for information on the issue okay thank you larry we appreciate it so we're moving in the time of the service for baptismal renewal and so as we do that you're going to need your purple card and again that was in your packet bag this morning and uh... so as we we continue our work this morning we want the work to be worship all and that is why we began really the service of baptismal renewal which we began last year yes point of order uh... bishop you announced the vote in regards to uh... the uh... uh... i believe it was the change on one of the standing rules as past unanimously it was not unanimous i voted against it but you're not looking to your left yet and we'd appreciate if you would well i will and thank you for that correction i did look to my left i didn't see and so i apologize let it be recorded it was not unanimous okay thank you so uh... as i was saying about our time together we're grounded in our baptisms i'll speak more about that this evening but be mindful of that as we move through our time together this morning again i welcome you were glad that you were here and let us remember you are not delegates you are members your lay and clergy members the annual conference an equalization for me that's equal lay and equal clergy and so begin to think of yourselves as a church members of a church at this time for this period known as the north texas annual conference i invite you into a moment of reflection thinking about the waters of baptism that have called and empowered and claimed and sent all of us to hear the call to come to the water take me to the war take me to the war take me to let us pray dear heavenly father we thank you for this beautiful glorious day we thank you for another day above ground oh god but we thank you for the hospitality of first united method of church richeson we ask you to bless them oh god because in your word in genesis twelve three you said you will bless those that bless us and you will curse those that curse us so bless them oh god for all that they continue to do this annual conference we ask you to have your way let your holy spirit be present in each and every person oh god and lord we ask you to hide our bishop behind the cross so the people will not see or hear him would but hear and see you in him we're listening for a word from the lord today and so lord we say speak lord your servant is listening in jesus name so i often receive invitations to preach in churches in the north texas annual conference and those invitations come in a variety of ways or i should say for a variety of purposes uh... here it came for groundbreaking of the new building that we're enjoying it comes up for an anniversary of a building or an anniversary of a congregation it comes for it comes for dedication that means that the church mortgage is paid off those are the ones i love the best or it comes for a consecration consecrating a building to the glory of god all those invitations come with specificity if you notice they're really markers in terms of time and in terms of buildings and edifices it reminds me that we really do like to build things and that's good but there's also a reminder that somehow that uh... there's a marker in terms of what that building represents so two weeks ago i believe it's two weeks ago i was invited to come and celebrate and uh... preach for the one hundredth anniversary of the sanctuary of the van alstein church and as i drove into van alstein i and i passed the baptist church first and then i passed the disciples of christ church and then i came to the van alstein church and i must tell you what i immediately thought ours looks better than the others but it's not just about looking better it really is about something deeper than that already i knew that but then members of the congregation began to describe for me their ministry we tend to think and this is not anything in terms of comparison we tend to think that larger is always better or best but authentic and unique ministry happens in a variety of settings across the north texas annual conference that can be very surprising to all of us and one of the great privileges of being a bishop in the north texas conferences you realize about how much true how true it is that thriving vital authentic ministry is happening in all different kinds of settings it really is what provides hope to me personally about the work of the north texas conference so this is what i learned this summer there will be three hundred children in the van alstein vacation bible school three hundred children is a lot of energy but it's a lot of good energy there'll be over a hundred students who will be going on mission trip this summer so what the van alstein church has done which is what needs to happen in every places they see themselves not only as a congregation for their members but they see themselves as a community of faith that seeks to embrace and invite everyone in the community whether they are a member of a congregation or not it's the way they begin to tell the story of Jesus so that his story may become their story it's the way of meeting new people it's really what we're about and then i began to think of the appointed lesson for that day on which i've preached you know it from the seventeenth chapter of acts paul has gone to athens he has been witnessing there talking he's somewhat in a little bit of a scuffle already it is normal and natural for his ministry his missionary spirit and in that he says uh... in front of the area i see that you are very religious people you even have an alter inscribed to an unknown god i see you are very religious people and then he begins to make his case and his witness to jesus the christ human-building human beings like to build things i'm also reminded to begin to reflect upon that that there is a flurry of activity in europe uh... in the first four or five hundred years of the second millennium the tenth through the fifteenth centuries it did carry on after that and in those centuries the building of churches and cathedrals throughout the european world at that time coming out of uh... the dark ages they built these grand structures which continue to be built on there's something special about the the spurred people to that kind of activity what i would call a religious building but it's something to mark that same period of time because we are so driven to the west i want to tell you that in the gun which was the capital of the ancient bernie's kingdom in fact it was the first capital that brought that kingdom together those twenty-four square miles and all the gun the capital they built in that same time period in a twenty-four square mile area on the banks of the ira wadi river five times more religious structures than were built in europe at the same time so you see this is not just limited to the west of the christian faith but it is just a symbol about deep hunger somehow to connect with the spiritual that deep hunger to find meaning and purpose in life whatever they become aware of it is the desire to connect today if you were going to be gone and you you would climb up the sun temple as i did one early evening and watch the sunset on the ira wadi river and hear footsteps going down the steps of this temple or you'd hear bikes as they leave the area people going home and see the sun beautifully set on the ira wadi river you would also say i see that you are religious people or were once i've been drawn again into a reading of the book by bill shores bill shores may or may not be a familiar name to you he was and is still he was the founder and still serves as the executive of share our strength in the number of years ago he wrote a book called the cathedral within and he began to talk about the building of the cathedrals in europe uh... in that same time period that we've just referenced and how it is that really became a way to express human beings desires and how it is that it really then began to coalesce around the community and how the building of the cathedral really provided something deep and significant for all the people in the community he translated that into the work of a non-profit and in that he began to talk the same things that were made it possible for people to do the impossible uh... over a thousand years ago or the same kinds of tools that can be used or principles i should say that can be used in building non-profits and then he highlights five significant but i read that book again because i wanted to refer to it in terms of what does this have to do with the church because the building of the cathedrals then and the way at which he's uh... articulated for the building of non-profits really we need to return to those roots in some ways because we could learn something we could be reminded of something about how we really built places like this and not just how we built places like this but how paul would even say walking through here would say i see that you're very religious religious people i think that really what we have to do is understand that we are about creating a new thing that's simply what god's challenge is to all of us and what it means is is that we're going to have to move from death or dying to resurrection move from death to resurrection and we need to understand that in order to become in order to move to resurrection then we have to become an apostolic people an apostolic people that is more concerned about who is outside these walls than who is in this space it is a desire somehow to seek invite and attract other beloved children of god who don't know that as i've walked into cathedrals and basilicas not only in our country and europe i'm a marvel at how they did it given that we have modern machinery we can easily see how it could be done but we don't do it like that anymore well i still don't know the engineering and frankly i don't know that many of us would be interested in the engineering simply because we're not wired that way that's not a way of dismissing that but we've come together for a different purpose than that to talk about principles one of the things they understood early is that cathedral building was a lifetime commitment because when you begin to think about it, it took hundreds of years to build some of those magnificent places there are people who began to work on those cathedrals or those large churches and they realized i will never see this completed i will never see this completed you will never see the work of the church completed but what they did is they operated and lived with this grand vision a detailed blueprint to bring about the desired outcome so the really the question for us is what is our grand vision north texas uh... we know it's about growing battle congregations making disciples for the transformation of the world but i always sort of i sometimes begin to think about saying that saint benedict and the rule of benedict and reminded that uh... anyone who came to a benedict monastery was welcomed as christ himself because the benedict teams never knew were told you never know that the stranger you welcome maybe the christ which comes with phrase many of you have memorized that is one of my favorites god wants to introduce us to people who we do not know so that we may introduce them to the god who knows them and loves them it's also important to a little history of a recent annual conference uh... something that uh... was somewhat contentious for us last year and it was nowhere near unanimous vote last year we voted to close a church along the three eighty corridor i know that uh... some people voted no and uh... for good reasons uh... there was an average of twenty persons who came to worship there most of them did not live in the community or the neighborhood and frankly our neighbors through series of currencies really didn't see our church is very welcoming but you voted to close it now the interesting piece about that is within a couple of miles we had started a new congregation that was meeting in a school difficulty getting some traction after a while moving in and out of school for a number of years is hard work new church planners who in schools would you agree it is hard hard work so what we did is after the closure then we said that the crossway united at this church gathering faith community out of grace avenue community could worship there they did some renovations on the building but there's some outcomes that happen and sometimes we don't talk about outcomes enough so these these are things that happened so uh... pre-move that is before crossway moved into the building that had been closed and it got renovated just for their use until they find a permanent home their average worship attendance at this time last year was one hundred and six after the move into the building over a six or seven month period their average attendance worship attendance on a sunday morning is one hundred and sixty two that's called sixty percent if you do the math in terms of professions of faith pre-move post-move eleven tripling baptisms to now seven since they moved in new members for prior to the move of the first part of twenty sixteen since moving twenty four new members i just want you to know the effect your decision the outcome what occurred so the challenge for us is how do we move from what has been and is not happening to what can be what kind of courage does it take for us to move from death to resurrection but also there's a there's a narrative about that and the narrative about it is also that the relationship between the church and the community is a good one because a sidewalk is built so children can actually walk to the school bus stop these are simple things but it makes a difference in how people who live outside of community faith understand who we really are these small things are important each number that is more is about a human being and a child of God that it matters to God you see you need to understand is i we all need to understand that we are stewards not only the north texas conference ministry the ministry the night of the church but also the ministry of our Christ this is not about size it's about pursuing our mission with passion and our mission is not to help people i want you to hear that our mission is not to help people our mission is to claim the christian faith so that that message becomes transforming for them and in that end of itself becomes the way that we begin our own passion of how we do care for people and how we provide compassion but we are not a social service we're a community of believers and beloved children of God we have to remember then that this is a lifetime commitment that we continually stay on top of what it means to be an apostolic church but also means that there's some things that we need to address the ongoing work of reconciliation not only our country around the world is is challenging it's more challenging today around the globe than it was a number of years ago we know it's also challenging in terms of our own communities and so there's conversation of which we've begun to have in a conversations that are deeply important to the life of the north texas conference in order for us to be models for the our communities in which we live we can have conversations with people about the matters of race and we realize that the conversation needs to be different as it's being changed it's about cultural intelligence and in january the clergy in the north texas conference gathered at annual covenant day and heard a presentation on cultural competence or intelligence it's something that's happening in universities now something that's specifically happening at SMU and so it is a way in which we begin to understand each other and not be dismissive let me give you an example let me say this we must move beyond traditional frameworks in dealing with the complexity of our lives together in connection and community so that in addition to increasing our spiritual rational intelligence we will indeed move beyond traditional understandings of diversity and inclusion to seek cultural intelligence so the Wesleyan ideal that innovation and authentic relationship go hand in hand and the greatest promise that our initiatives on cultural intelligence provide us is to render moot the old and ineffective dance of blame and shame and ignorance and ambivalence because none of us really are so our culturally authentic relationship is not about a rehearsal of our past or to ignore the very real structures of injustice shape to continue to shape our lives our church our country but instead it calls us to establish out of our own natures our sinful natures of relationships they become honest and genuine and deliberate i don't know how we're gonna get there i don't know what it necessarily looks like and those who want a quick solution you're going to be disappointed because we will not try just another program for the quadrant and discard it will develop a structure means that reflects the unique reality of our conference and uh... people are already in that conversation about how that will happen we will lean on those who have significant skills and work in this and find a way that is sustainable unique and most importantly effective and so many of our clergy had an introduction we will do that with laity and another day but in the meantime encourage you to participate in some ongoing efforts like project unity in the city of Dallas that we can practice the art of authentic conversation you can also the same thing is say the same thing in terms i think cultural intelligence has to do with a whole notion or the idea of refugees we need to have an understanding that refugees are refugees really from for more torn regions i shared in a column a number a couple years ago related our family's own experience jones my experience is really at the church i was serving at the time about a refugee family from vietnam that we became acquainted with my parents were another unit that the church was so taken with them they encourage their church to do the same thing my my parents my mom and my stepdad actually became the primary point persons for this refugee family in fact they became the acknowledged grandparents my stepfather uh... his name was given his last name was given as the first name to the first born boy in that family to this day i say that i found out the kind of man that my stepfather was because his interaction with the refugee family who spoke no english it was transforming to this day my mother is treated like royalty in this family i tell my brother we should treat her as well as they do but i don't think we can match this but she is the guest of honor at every wedding everything because these are people who are given a chance we tend to think sometimes that refugees are the enemies but the church in which i served until coming to be with you the preacher who was with us last night could have testified that just from taking in a refugee on political asylum who's a presbyterian pastor in the democratic republic of the convo fleed for his life and they saw it like they as hard as they could to get in political asylum and they worked with senator cornan and they did everything they could and took some time but now today because of that welcome of that one person who feared for his life in his own country serves as a pastor to a community from the democratic republic of convo in the first time at this church at first they worship in the traditional service at eleven o'clock they translate from french i mean from english into french they participate in the life of the congregation they've added some excitement to the congregation they not only do that but they do his spanish speakers as well it becomes a way into really embody what inclusion is just because of one refugee the people are able to see the church is much larger than they think if you were to be at lovers lane on a sunday morning you would see how rich that is in terms of its own diversity uh... two worshiping congregations from the continent of africa a number of other persons who represented throughout the worshiping communities at lovers lane i'm telling you that refugees begin if we really are serious about meeting all of god's beloved children and not necessarily being afraid just because somebody looks different than we do or speaks a different language that the riches that fall to us in terms of our own personal spiritual journeys are rich it also means that this long that we also have to begin to understand that things begin to look a lot different we begin to learn that cathedrals are built only on the foundations of others but with the sharing of strengths as i've just outlined uh... in the end when they're building cathedrals is is not just the contributions of the artisans and the experts but of everyone in the community and as i described a moment ago these communities tend to be more inclusive rather than less inclusive and the gifts don't belong just the experts but it is a shared strength and the gifts are present in our congregations and communities faith in our communities in ways that are unimaginable so the last five years for me has been a learning experience over a number of ways uh... these are things i shared with the council of bishops when they were meeting here in dallas just to share with them some of our missions that i used uh... that i didn't use i uh... invited some persons to come and speak to them and right now everybody wants to steal talent from north texas so i'm going to talk about two of them uh... number of years ago is uh... white rock was undergoing a change in pastures and i've known of the attempt to sell the building and uh... move the church to another place that didn't happen i need to tell you i thought it should have happened that happened before i was here i can understand why it didn't happen i can understand why people want to happen i think it was mixed but over a period of time the white rock congregation and this is not the throw stones this is the way so many of us operate had spent down their endowment significantly to try and jumpstart their ministry some of you remember the white rock church was uh... a very very large church in the north texas conference in sixty seventies in the early eighties and even beyond and as we were having conversations with michael boone who is going to be the new pastor and sort of done before i put in motion a little bit before i became a bishop i said we're just gonna spend on the endowment we're gonna be in this we're gonna be in a worse place than we were uh... this is how you know that i don't always just sort of want to get my way in a cabinet meeting that's the one thing i want to tell you uh... and so i can remember cami gasses saying to me and jim osher he just need to take the chance and i can remember saying to michael boone i don't believe you can do this i don't think it can happen this past spring i worshiped white rock united methods church it was young it was vibrant there's a good number of people in the sanctuary in the worship had a celebration afterwards michael showed me around i saw the community of garden over which i had gotten hate mail from when they put it in i'd never tell you the mail i get about any of you you will you won't believe it now don't everybody's out there is it i is that i'll be sure no it's not don't worry about this but what i'm saying is you know it's just that and in the networking space and i thought to myself my gosh this place is young everything's happening here i finally said the michael boone i put my arm around the subject i was wrong michael made me feel better he said bishop you do not know how many nights i stayed awake worrying if this could happen and what i'm saying to you is that we have to take bold risk and they will fail but they will produce fruit at times and that one kind of church doesn't suit all kinds of people and so there are ministries so diverse in the north texas conference but it doesn't happen diversity in one church it's diversity the whole conference happens and you cannot mimic or imitate what's happening somewhere else and thinking that it will be authentic but you have to know that you do create the kind of bold ministry that can happen in such a place that will prove to bear fruit and to welcome others so path one interns are way in which we begin to use the work of the general board of discipleship and our own work in planting seeds so we've had a number of path one interns in the last couple years patrick littlefield has been with union coffee shop learning how to perhaps be the church to those who are much younger he's going to a church that wants to be younger and we're hoping that the seeds that were planted and that investment bear fruit Juan Carlos Monterey has been a path one intern with Casalinda and David Rangel and so this summer then Casalinda will will birth the first second site plant of a Hispanic church of the United Methodist Church in the nation it's a way in Bryant Phelps who's been serving as an SBC 21 internship strengthening the black church of the 21st century at St. Paul will be a path one intern at Grace Avenue as we begin to explore ways in which to have a church be the church for the african-american community in northern collin county it's just about planting planting seeds and knowing that some of them will sprout and some of them will not but it's about taking risk if we're going to be affected and lastly cathedrals were designed to tell stories all i'd like to walk into a building of the drill this great stained glass and look and try to figure out what some of those pictures are and what they represent i served a church that had this abstract stained glass window and i thought it was one of the most unique things but like what for i mean i literally go what's this about and what i did was is that uh... i finally learned the story and it was the story from chaos to creation to the ten commandments to the resurrection to the birth of church which is had the symbol of that church in it to the new creation all done with movement and color it turned out that what we began to do is begin to teach each conformant the story of the christian faith by using these abstract windows and time and again i'd see a sixth grader bring his grandparents in after confirmation sunday and say let me tell you the story of the church you see the way in which we teach people teach young people teach ourselves as we tell stories stories not only the faith but of our ministry so a number of saturdays ago had gone to the post office in plano where we live at coick and parker and as i was leaving i stopped by the house on the corner now the house on the corner is built by the christian myth is church every summer and it's built on the corner it's sort of it's one of the big talking points in plano texas and uh... so i decided to stop and take a couple pictures and talk to a few people i need to tell you i was not dressed then like i am today i was real incognito i hadn't shaved i don't know if i'd i think i'd comb my hair i'd gone i mean i was just going to post office i i just i was just going to make sure i didn't see my picture on the wall you know something like that but so i went to mail something and uh... i said i'm going to stop by the house on the corner and take a couple pictures and then i began to meet people and they were telling what happened and they said now are you a member here and i said well no not really well we want to invite you to our church i said well i've been here a few times well why don't you come back i said i will and then i said uh... i'm the bishop of the north texas conference i knew you looked familiar that sort of scared me a little bit when i was dressed and looking i knew you look familiar and then someone introduced herself to me and she began to tell me that she was kim rankenmeyer's mother and i said i knew you looked familiar but then the reason why this story is important is because of a larger story in order for things to really happen in terms of transformation we all have to have strategies it's not just about doing something good one day it's about moving with strategic purpose and passion knowing not necessarily what will come next but be willing to know that you can be moved to something significant and so what started with house on the corner then for christ church plano and it's happened in other churches because this one i just want to to share with you briefly is a program about project hope of which i've been familiar and acquainted with for a number of years because about the same time that the church i was pastoring did something similar project hope is a program that transforms lives of its adults participants and their families by gaining training in education and the program focuses on family faith education career budget health and personal issues and so the journey begins when the family signs a contract now there's several other pieces to their whole initiative related to persons who are living in poverty and underserved persons and involves a school on sunday for students who enrolled in a and a project is called project next generation which helps focus on children and students uh... ages four to eighteen in each of the families in project hope uh... the school on sunday's a way to continue tutor people and they uh... volunteers make commitments and they do this on sunday and it becomes a way in which they're heavily invested in the life of these families there are other ministries this program other clubs summer camps and things of that nature but i want to tell you a story the first story the story is really about a family who was selected to receive the first house on the corner they are completing their thirteen and this is the story of a young of a of a young man and he said i remember coming to the church to help build the house in the parking lot i was only six when my mom brother and i first moved into our new home in the douglas community it was a fresh start for our family we met again when i was struck by car at the age of eight and later when i was hit by train at age eleven despite their careful watch growing up was not easy after years of hanging out with the wrong crowd and on the verge of going to juvenile detention i knew that it was time to stop being the kid that was always getting into trouble i started playing football and made new friends in hopes to change my ways i look to my project hope family fifteen years earlier i mean but ten years earlier for guidance that's where i met my mentor chris matthews every friday friday for the past five years chris has come to my school to eat lunch with me talk about my life and steer me in the right direction when i started making some bad decisions again chris and missy wilkinson enrolled me in school on sunday that's where i met my tutor and thomas ellie i felt that god had brought these amazing people i love the reference to god i felt god brought these amazing people to my life to bring me the hope to show me there were people who care for me and encourage to keep buying this complicated world through the good and the bad i have met my angels first-hand thanks to my help thanks to the help of my christian i met this church family i will walk across the graduation stage of my high school diploma this june and plan to attend college in the fall i do not know how i got to this point in my life well i do it began the moment this church gave my family a home thirteen years ago and i will always be grateful for the help and support that my family and i've been given by this church i don't know how to show this gratitude but i know i won't let these people down friends we can do this this is hard it's really hard to do that which transforms our communities and people's lives let's start doing the deep work let's begin anew let's be willing for old models to die so that new life let's be most tied to our mission and least tied to our models let's be tied to the mission of christ and not to the models of things that were good in the nineteen fifties or if we're lucky the sixties let's go deeper but let's also go broader let us begin to understand that somehow god wants to us to meet people who are very different than we are and live in community without let's begin to understand that hopefully somebody could comes behind us because not of the buildings we left because of the buildings because of the things that we did out of those buildings that are impossible to walk through and say i see i see they were very religious people in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit the creator of the universe says to us do not fear or be afraid have i not told you from all and declare it you are my witnesses is there any god beside me there is no other rock i know not one sisters and brothers in christ we gather to remember who's we are a signified in our baptism through the sacrament of baptism god's spirit has been poured out upon water water that flows freely for all who will receive it water that brings hope to all who thirst for righteousness water that refreshes life nurtures growth and offers new birth so today we come to the waters to renew your commitment to christ who has raised us the spirit who has burdened us and the creator who is making all things new and so i ask you you please stand as you're able and so i ask you will you turn away from the powers of sin and death will you let the spirit use you as prophets to the powers that be will you proclaim the good news and live as disciples of Jesus christ his body on earth will you be living witnesses to the gospel individually and together whatever you are and in all that you do will you receive and profess the christian faith as contained in the scriptures of the old and new testaments the spirit of the lord is with us let us pray almighty god the life you birthed in us by baptism into jesus christ will never die your justice never fails your mercy is everlasting the healing river flow but sometimes we try we try to block the flow we redirect the winds of the spirit or we walk so far away from the life-giving stream that we do not hear its sound and we forget its power we parts ourselves we are drying come upon us holy spirit come upon these waters let these waters be to us drops of your mercy let these waters renew in us the resurrection power of jesus most holy god abba father jesus christ savior lord spirit of fire spirit over the waters spirit of holiness eternal god one in three and three in one our glory is yours now you may be seated we now invite the commission ministers to come forth at this time the ushers will direct you to the stations for the renewal of baptism remember your baptism and be thankful study about that who shall wear the robe and crown study it baptism and be thankful upon Clayton Oliphant who's the chair of the Episcopacy Committee to come and make their remarks so the Episcopacy Committee are joining me at this time I think we are delighted to have them here last july at the jurisdictional conference transition time for bishops the jurisdictional Episcopacy Committee the jurisdictional Episcopacy Committee in their wisdom reappointed Bishop Mike McKee for a second quadrennium as bishop of the Dallas area of the north texas conference the best part of that deal is that we get Joan McKee who attended one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the country austin college and we are delighted to have them as our Episcopal family we pray for them the committee on Episcopacy is really a prayerful group that prays for our Episcopal family and tries to encourage and support them we know that you join us in praying for our leaders praying for our bishop and for Joan uh... what an incredible gift they are to us Joan's work with project transformation is particularly inspiring to all of us and we have a gift uh... in their honor that we have made to project transformation and a gift that we hope will enable them to spend a little time with their grandchildren as well just a moment to say that last night there was a sea of green in the room and that was a hundred and four twenty four college students coming here to serve on project transformation and underneath those green t-shirts there are students with diverse backgrounds it's a very diverse group uh... some are coming from rural areas we have suburban and inner city represented sixteen grew up in the program they are racially diverse they are economically diverse gender diverse it's a great group they are they have spent the first couple weeks coming together learning to navigate each other becoming immersed so that they can go out and serve the community and when the summer's over they will go out and serve the world you took the north texas conference took an idea and you embraced it and you grew it and you understood that this was the church going forward i thank you for this gift and i thank you for your support for project transformation and for every program in the conference that works with children and with youth and college thank you you join me in expressing our support bishop mckay and john mckay thank you so much so a couple of introductions the first is that we have the first is that we have a special guest and and uh... with us today uh... the former bishop of bolivia of the methods church in bolivia bishop uh... you can go home uh... bishop home uh... where are you that we may greet you bishop home there you are it's also my pleasure to introduce uh... someone who's known by by some of you uh... as he was the resident bishop of the dallas area for eight years from nineteen ninety six to two thousand four uh... bill oden is uh... uh... and maryland owner dear friends of jones and mine and we are always delighted when they are in the area of the odens were here for the council bishops meeting earlier in may uh... he is here today with us uh... i'll make a couple of statements about that but bishop odin uh... i'm glad that you've come home to the place where you belong and so uh... i'm always glad when oklahoma sees best to come to texas so uh... so bishop odin i think you want to address the conference about uh... some work that he's done uh... related to uh... his life in ministry and uh... it's something that's going to be made available to you and i'm going to encourage you uh... to purchase one as well i've read it so bishop odin thank you bishop mckay i'm pleased to be here and appreciate the gracious hospitality of your bishop john westley was known as uh... evangelist a preacher uh... and an organizer but he was also a bookseller every place he went he had a bag of books to sell that continued in america with asbury and bishops since uh... bishop mckendry and so have written their biography, autobiographies, their memoirs and uh... have delivered them to the church i'm sure that mine will be on the new york times bestseller list i appreciate very much uh... the memoirs that i've read of bishops and especially like bishop gerald kennedy's uh... while i'm on my feet he tells about the time indian mission conference address the council of bishops and when finished the uh... presiding bishop frank smith said uh... how much he enjoyed presiding over the indian conference and announced that they gave him a headdress when he retired his brother angie smith jumped up from the back and said frank why is it they gave you just a headdress and they gave me a beautiful silver-tool saddle and frank just immediately responded and said well angie the indians have a tradition of honoring the part of the human body used the most i had the privilege of serving the elusiana conference for eight years the most unique conference in method ism and then the north texas conference the greatest conference in and then after four years as bishop and residents at perkins and ecumenical officer we retired to santa fe and from there to the uh... windcrest retirement center in denver it's really a joy to be here i appreciate your bishops hospitality uh... i'll be leaving it noon to fly back to denver where maryland and i will leave in the morning to ask for the last and crews celebrating our sixtieth wedding anniversary we've never been on the cruise and i'm very fearful of the ship sinking or me getting seasick but we're going to try it anyway and again i want to thank uh... bishop mckay for his beautiful hospitality and joel for her help and we're leaving right after lunch and uh... uh... played an elephant and mary brook will be at my table selling books to anyone who wants to drop by after lunch thank you again and really enjoyed being with you so at break time which will come a little bit later bishop odin will be selling his memoirs and uh... i have i have read it and so i encourage you really do encourage you to buy one i think it's a helpful for you to know something not only about his life but the life of the north texas conference during a period of time is important when i began to think about role models in the council of bishops of uh... of the last quarter of a century and persons who really did understand the nature and the work of the church at appropriate times and bishop bill odin without any doubt is a leader as a leader of the united this church he failed to tell you that he also serves the president council of bishops uh... frankly i think that's the hardest job i know in the church i mean think about presiding over group uh... people who really all want to be leaders i mean and just function that way all the time it's hurting cats is child's play compared to that i want you to know that so but and we appreciate your bill and Marilyn odin for being here and again he'll be at the table uh... signing his books and i encourage you to get one i believe now we're going to move to the time for the board of ordain ministry report and so reverend tim morrison and all who are reporting can come and sit in the chancellor in the choir loft and so we'll move through that report and so be attentive there's some of special presentations will be made at this time thank you morning bishop and members of the north Texas conference my name is tim morrison and it is my privilege to lead you in the board of ministry report this morning i would like for uh... not just these folks but anybody who is a member of the board of ministry of north Texas to come and stand over here alongside with us right here go ahead and come with your seats and while they were coming i would like to invite anyone who serves on the district committee whatever you are would you stand up right where you are right in your spot we'll have the board come up here d coms please stand i would just to acknowledge uh... your presence and give a hearty statement of gratitude and thanks and for everyone else in the room these people that you see standing up need your constant prayer and support continue to pray for them that the holy spirit will continue to anoint them with grace and the power of discernment in this ultimately really significant and wonderful part of our conference at this time i would like to begin our report with marcia middleton who will um... leaders in local pastor my name is marcia middleton i'm the director of local pastors education and i come to you today to acknowledge three groups of people the first of those who have completed licensing school on friday may twenty six we just finished and um... we if you that is you please make your way to the front and i will uh... read your name and you'll be greeted by our chair of local pastors and uh... we want to include jeff cullen ryan elms ash harman lawni hawkins sandi herd norman bedowo nick mccray riselda montalban then phillips at price carlos remeris and jesse sanchez these folks uh... are going to be serving us some of them full-time some part-time and we appreciate what they do and what they will be doing as they serve in the life of the church it's really important work thank you so much if you have graduated from course of study school this year please make your way up you'll be the next group and our thanks to all of you today once you acknowledge um... yes course of study school is the um... school uh... the alternative education route for persons in our denomination that are not uh... going to seminary for a wide variety of reasons it is not because it's easy it is not and it's not because it's short it is not it takes a minimum of five years to complete and uh... up to ten if you go part-time and uh... that's often extended to twelve which is a statute of limitations so we have persons who have served a long time we're going to be recognizing them today we have al easterling paul mayenberg luella williams luella is presiding at a funeral today we have robert williams and we have bill louis who i believe has finished his work as well haven't seen him this morning there you are you want to come up and get your goody and we may have more and if that is the case let us know but we want to recognize all of these who have gone to school a long time to serve you and they do so for very little remuneration uh... they work really hard they go to places in the conference that not just everybody will go to be perfectly honest and we're grateful for them thank you all so much if you have finished ever course of study basic course of study if you are a graduate of basic course of study please stand where you are and let's recognize you thank you so much and you may return to your seats folks and i want to welcome reverend billy eagles thank you marcia yesterday at the clergy session we had the privilege of uh... voting into membership candidates for associate membership provisional membership and full membership we have the joy this morning of introducing them to you here at annual conference we're going to begin with the associate member that uh... we received yesterday and then the provisional members as i call your name if you'll please come to the front the person that we are receiving this year into associate membership is peter mcnapp and then we have ten provisional deacons that we elected yesterday kash michael flinn tammy galloway margaret jinkins paviel jinkins evan jones kathy nations allison shulman kathy sweeney emma williams and then we elected into provisional membership twelve provisional elders and i'll invite them to come forward as well roi atwood george battle the third jimmy decker ricky harrison allison gene steven lowe hofer christopher o'reilly david rongel chris rick warts courtney schultz and taylor smith to provisional membership this year yesterday we also had the privilege of receiving a person who comes to us uh... in recognition of her orders from another christian denomination and that person is martha valencia and persons that we are uh... thrilled to introduce you today as being received into full membership uh... and they will be ordained this evening uh... phil diki maria dixon hall and ben hensley they're elected into full membership and will be ordained tonight as deacons and then there are those who were elected into full membership who will be ordained tonight as elders rick davis jonathan grace donnie haywood amy spore and alex williams and then there are two other persons that fit into this category tonight one of them uh... has been ordained was recognized uh... with his orders from another denomination two years ago he's been through our residency program and yesterday he was elected into full membership of the annual conference and that's jonathan perry and then we have another person who's been a full member of our annual conference for several years uh... but she is switching her orders uh... from deacon to elder and so tonight she will be ordained as an elder and that is rachel bachman bishop we welcome these uh... and we look forward and to the celebration that will be held tonight uh... we end up with ten who are being ordained and twenty-two who are being commissioned this evening it should be quite an event even as we welcome those who are entering on the journey we want to honor those who have run the race and have kept the faith and so we want to take some time now to you to recognize and to give thanks to our retirees i want to share with you that as we welcome them forward that they're accumulated years of service are six hundred and fifty and just to think about what that means in terms of the life of our conference uh... they've carried forward the work of jesus christ in i think just about every capacity in our conference they have touched all of our lives i know that we are here in in so many ways and have blessed the lives of so many people they have guided the life of the church they've strengthened their communities and as a conference they have given their lives to enrich our life as a conference and we know these who are going to be coming forward as pastors and as leaders and as friends and even as they've answered the historic questions and accepted the authority from the bishop they've run the race and they've kept the faith they have blessed us and they're giving of their lives for the proclamation of the gospel so on the retirement as they come we express our deepest gratitude and our heartfelt prayers as they move forward what's ahead for each of them so i'm going to invite the retirees to come forward at this time uh... with their spouses if that's applicable and they are attending and so we'd welcome you to come forward in these moments bill bryan alice coder nancy destefano larry george paul goodrich sarah hardaway ken hildebrand and a husband butler for markham mike nickles jim osher diane pressley larry tinsley pristen weaver david weber pat wittmore gene wisdom clay wammock and larry davis again as these come before us i'd invite us to give our expressions of gratitude so before these return to the seats uh... i want to say a special word of appreciation of paul goodrich did share with me and i'm just paul go ahead and share this now because if i don't tell somebody that i'll forget it anyway so uh... paul goodrich said after a few months that he'll come he'll do interim pastor in the north texas conference so i just want to get that on the public record he was serious about it though so i want to thank that because that that is important ministry by annual conference i want to say thank you to all of you for your service and so many of you i've known in different ways through the years and uh... i want to pray god's blessings upon you and thank you again for your service so may we pray together holy and gracious god six hundred plus years of ministry are represented in the lives of these who are before us ministry to the thousands upon thousands of people hundreds of thousands of sermons preach hospital visits made counseling sessions but just representing you and so for this endless line of splendor we give you thanks and may their years ahead be fruitful and good ones and for others that continue to touch even as retired clergy because we're all still ministers of the gospel god's blessings upon all of them we have a little bit more of the retirement to do and we we're going to do that now so i'd also want to to invite us to recognize and to appreciate and to celebrate artikans terry jones and paul mckay i would invite them also to come forward at this time and that we might give them a thanks as they retire as well so terry jones so i want to thank terry for his service as well and to remind you that the work in the order of deacons is important life of our church because it connects the church with the world in unique ways our first experiences with terry as the bishop of the north texas conference happened at an interfaith service uh... that at howland park uh... or actually uh... uh... interreligious service i really should say in terms of that experience and so i want to thank him not only for his work in the local church but his outstanding work in terms of some interfaith and interreligious work there's a passion for him and continues to be so so i want to thank you terry for that so let me uh... prayer prayer blessing for terry's ministry and his retirement as well holy god we give thanks for terry and his work among us that continues even after retirement great for the ways in which he has moved not only through congregations but with other people people of different faiths different traditions and help them to see that those of us who call ourselves followers of jesus and are known as that are truly known for the values in the core of who jesus the christ was and continues to be in all our lives for terry's ministry and how he represented you we're indeed all group we're indeed very grateful for our pray this prayer on your behalf in the name of the christ thank you terry bishop as we continue with the report this morning i want to let everyone know that the videos for both the ordinance and the retirees will be playing throughout the extent of conference and you'll be seeing those throughout as the days progress next i have invited uh... matt tugle and blare tomsen white to come and address you this morning because as part of the board of ordain ministry we have a new residency program one that many of you may not be familiar with but we are incredibly excited about possibilities and new things that are happening for the future morning bishop annual conference it was two years ago this month that the bishop invited the two of us to lunch seasons fifty-two and blare and i didn't know what he was up to but we figured he was up to something yes sir don't tell him i spent that much money they made a expected i paid for it i paid for it no you didn't i paid for it he paid for it and you know we're sure he's gonna ask us to do but we need to ask us to do something and what he asked us to do was to give leadership to our residency program moving forward as many of you know the residency program is a two-year program between when deacons and elders are commissioned and they're eligible uh... to be ordained as an important piece of our ministry here in the north texas annual conference because it's helping to prepare deacons and elders to continue to grow in their ministry as they minister to the prisoners of our congregation i want to share with you just three things this morning about the residency first we want to share with you some of the assumptions that we're making stepping into this new model second we want to share with you uh... a little bit about the uh... philosophy behind it and some of the research that we've done and then finally very quickly we want to share with you some of the key components we spent a year researching this and then last year we began implementing it for the first year with those deacons and elders who were commissioned at annual conference last year so first here are the assumptions that blair and i were making as we stepped into developing this new residency first we believe that the north texas annual conference residency program should focus on areas of learning that are not experienced in seminary we didn't want these two years to just be a recap of what residents had already learned in seminary the second thing that we felt is that we needed to shift the onus of learning from the annual conference and the residency program to the residents so we're saying uh... this is an opportunity for you to continue in your growth blair and i're going to support you in that but the onus is really on you to continue your education over the next two years third our conference has marks of fruitfulness that identify what it means to be an effective minister and we're incorporating those into the residency and that's not what we're using to evaluate whether growth is occurring or not fourth is that we feel like the residency period those two years should be an incubator for innovative ministry so we're encouraging residents to think outside of the box and do innovative ministry and then finally we felt like if we're requiring our newest clergy to participate in this that this should be a want to and not just a have to kind of program and we feel like this residency ought to be of such high quality that residents want to participate in it so those are the five assumptions that we made going into this blair will share with you a little bit about the research that we did we learned and some of the key components of a residency program so part of our process in developing the new residency program involved contacting other residency programs and clergy leadership development programs across the country and gathering best practices one key learning for us was the distinction between horizontal and vertical learning horizontal learning has been the traditional model it's the sit and get model lecture style this is not as effective as the vertical model in which learners receive information that they must then integrate into their practice of ministry so our design of the program emphasizes vertical learning we want to engage in equip residents with resources and tools that will directly impact their ministry the expectation is that everything we do will feed into their making disciples project with an emphasis on developing projects that are creative innovative and truly move people into deeper levels of discipleship our program has three key components retreats this past year we met for two two-and-a-half day retreats at pro-throw center we aligned our guest presenters with key areas of the marks of fruitfulness at our first retreat last fall dr. Andy Stoker joined us to talk about family systems and help residents work through their family and church systems dr. Alice McKenzie led us through a preaching workshop Reverend Rebecca Hinsley shared about the luke 4 initiative and inspired residents to consider their missional field in their context reverend brian hardesty crouch led and guided residents through spiritual reflection devotion reverend jody smith offered a financial workshop focusing on clergy taxes this past spring we welcomed greg hawkins author and former executive director of willow creek church who really pushed us to consider what it means to make disciples of jesus christ one of our residents said of our retreats and her evaluation that our time in retreat together has truly been enriching for her personal discipleship and for her ministry and this is truly our deepest hope and prayer that our residents will both grow to be deeper disciples and also deep in their abilities to lead faithfully in their context the second aspect of our program is that every resident received a preaching mentor we are so grateful for the work of dr. Alice McKenzie and dr. Wes allen in the center for preaching excellence who helped to train mentors and guide this process of our program and we are thankful for our preaching mentors who dedicated their time to working with our residents residents met uh... and analyze several sermons with their preaching mentor several times this year we have consistently heard through our resident evaluations that our preaching mentors have been critical to their growth as preachers the third aspect of our program is our peer meetings we met four times this past year for day-long meetings where residents brought a verbatum and a sermon to share with their peers and receive feedback now these meetings have fostered deeper relationships among the residents and we hope encouraged a culture of asking for and receiving help from colleagues that will go well beyond our residency program uh... one final word about our program it is a work in progress and we continue to evaluate learn and adjust as we listen and discern what is truly fruitful for our residents and on a personal note matt and i want to say what a privilege it is to lead in this effort we learn so much from our residents and we are inspired by their faithfulness and love for god and for our church so we ask your prayers as we continue in our second year thank you our thanks to both matt and blare for the creative and prayerful and inspiring leadership for the residency program this at this time on behalf of the board of ministry i move for the adoption of this report of the board of ministry to the north texas conference this is before you if you will accept the report will you raise your hand cake thank you it passes thank you sir well let's express a word of appreciation the board of our day ministry this is difficult work so we're going to be on a break here in a moment as we break one of the things i want to remind you is that we're gonna come back uh... you're gonna have twelve minutes you'll be back at uh... ten forty five so that we can continue in the morning so we're only behind about three or four minutes we're gonna we're gonna make that up uh... as we move through this day and we will so uh... the other thing about that is remember that bishop odin will be in the shover welcome center am i correct about that and he will be signing his memoirs i encourage you to uh... to get this book again it'll have some good history the north texas conference uh... and then you make in at some point in the conversation get an even better history of the north texas conference but this is a really good one so if you'll do that so it's ten twenty four ten forty five we start by my watch or it's anyway you got ten or eleven minutes we have a few things to do before uh... the lunch break so as we could come back together let me uh... offer so as as we uh... as we gather let me make a couple of introductions uh... they're really known to uh... many of us in the room first first of all i want to uh... uh... welcome tom lock the president texas methods foundation tom is in the back of the center of the room so tom waive let's welcome tom lock president texas methods foundation thank you tom so as a reminder the texas methods foundation uh... is providing uh... great leadership in terms of developing clergy and lay leaders not only now uh... in the texas in new mexico annual conferences but throughout the jurisdiction and also throughout the country they become a convener many conversations some of which are known to us and some of which are not widely and broadly known about the future of the united methods church about its strengths about the depth of its witness about uh... our emerging uh... the emerging church as we're going to know it soon so we're grateful for the ways in which uh... tmf continues to invest in the united methods church and her god appointed missions and so tom thank you again for your leadership and what you do we appreciate it and thank you for being with the north texas tom always tells me he loves to come on sunday night to north texas because the worship is always rich and he certainly was last night so tom thank you i also saw dean craig hill a few moments ago and his dean hill in the though there you are so dean hill dean at perkins school of theology he's had a great year uh... craig we're so grateful for the ways in which you're leading the school and i want to say what appreciation so let's uh... great dean craig hill as well thank you okay so we're going to now watch retiree videos and not all of them but there are a few of them will watch for the next few minutes persons you saw a few moments ago a few minutes ago standing here who entering into the retired relationship you're going to see these videos now always find these to be rich and there are ways in which we make them available to the retirees as well let us go has been somewhat of a late-comer a late-bloomer because i didn't accept a call until i was beyond six careers and so the lord has used me as a change agent in many ways to go and minister to the poor to help those who are lost to bring to the fold life renewed life and so over these past years that i've been serving i've had the opportunity to uh... serve in the in the urban community at the same time served in cross-cultural appointments where i've i had a vision that all of god's people should indeed together as one i'm often reminded of the pentecost and how all of god's people came together and spoke many languages and all understood one another because of the holy spirit and so my hope for this time and throughout my journey is that this will come to fruition here on earth one of the ways that god has been creating over the course of my ministry has been in missions although i have long had a passion for prison ministry and ministries for the homeless being ordained has given me ways to live into those and other mission opportunities i've been blessed to be part of caros outside a ministry for women who have a loved one in prison or who have themselves been in prison and then through the dedicated work of reverend holly bandel and lady to craig jacob's first plano is a member of family promise in collin county and i've been privileged to spend the night on many of our rotations with these families and see both their ordinariness any of us might be in their shoes and also their extraordinary dedication and flexibility as they get back on their feet we and i have been blessed through these and other outreach opportunities that enable us to see the world beyond us and attend to the needs of those who are hurting whether physically mentally emotionally or spiritually after graduating from seminary and doing an internship and spending three years as an associate pastor i thought that i was really ready and knew everything there was to know about being a pastor when i arrived in maybank my first pastor it took less than forty eight hours for me to realize that i didn't know come from sycambe over the next forty years god used countless laypeople in each of the churches where i served to show me how to live as a christian and then how also to be a caring pastor so my advice to any of you who are beginning your ministry watch listen and learn from the laypeople in each of the churches you serve after about six months of phone calls to bill crouch back in nineteen ninety four ninety five asking him if he had a church that i could be assigned to he told me he did it was a church of misfits he said you'll fit right in and it was that kind of church richland united method is church but but gloriously so during eight years there at what became cornerstone we sold to church campuses and built a new church at a third location and for one who was most happy walking amongst the wildflower fields now i finish in the ski a community a microcosm of america itself undergoing rapid demographic and cultural change frustrating and fascinating both because god is in that change just as god is in each of us and in the spaces between us that knowledge affects the way that i see everything and everyone the light is in all things all people god's been creating in me ministry from the very beginning sending me wonderful people lady clergy friends garage maris who uh... was a large german in my first church always said on the third row in front of the pulpit and uh... fell asleep every sunday my first year in preaching and i was determined i was determined to keep him awake and by the end of the second year i was doing that but other wonderful people uh... lady clergy friends like uh... jordan grooms mentors like ted dot have uh... been sent by god to help shape me in the ministry that i do and i continue with that paying that forward as a part of the life that i live in ministry the people of god the people of god uh... we come in with our little bit of knowledge thinking we're gonna show them the way of faith and the truth of the matter is that they show us again and again and again so i have seen god working repeatedly and consistently and continuously through the lives of the people that i have been blessed to call to serve four churches over twenty years and god has never failed to teach me through them what uh... a life of following christ is like well when you ask about how god's been creating in me in my ministry i have to say uh... god had to start with raw material it was fifty one years ago when i was a junior in high school that i began to serve my first church and uh... then uh... over the next two or three years i served several other small rural churches and i was never happier in that setting and then i moved to the big city of dallas to go to seminary and and that's when god opened my eyes to the plight of poverty and people who lived in marginalized communities and so i had the joy of working in the what was then called the east dallas cooperative parish with john thornberg and bill brine and others and and it was just such a great time and then i went from there to uh... uh... affluent uh... growing suburb of flower mound and the pastor at treach and i was there for almost eighteen years and uh... then i went from there on to the conference office uh... to become a bureaucrat for jesus and help start new churches in the north texas conference and help with revitalization so uh... i guess when i look back i realized uh... uh... i didn't know what the heck i was supposed to do any place i went to do it it just took god's creativity and a lot of loving laypeople in the churches who helped shape me and mold me and uh... and raise me up and be patient with me and forgive me for all the mess ups that i made as their pastor god has been creating in my ministry even before my birth by sending a young pastor reverend h grady made to his very first church college mount in nineteen sixteen years later in the neighborhood i grew up in a family invited me to go to church they not only invited me they took me with them even out to eat afterwards that family whereas the grandson of h grady may now there have been other people in my ministry that have greatly affected me like john po hensley fred durham and reverend linwood john roberson he had a vision of twelve youth who would be the uh... called into the ministry i was one of the first of those twelve later on it was doctor gordon casad of walnut hill united methodist church who put me back on the road of licensed ministry i'm ending my ministry with that same church that h grady may began his ministry college man united methodist church after twenty nine years i indeed believe god has called me into such a great ministry of touching people's lives and they're touching mine in so many ways it's a very odd thing to find oneself standing at that strange place where active ministry meets the retired relationship so now as i look back at the diversity of the settings and the unique challenges and opportunities of those places to which i have been appointed and those communities to which my family has lovingly gone i can only praise god with the heart of deep gratitude and with a profound hope that i have not only heard but also tried faithfully to live into my understanding of ministry as loving god by loving others in god's name as doing justice loving kindness and walking humbly with god god's presence with me and gifts to me have changed my life in ways beyond my ability to name or number but i do know that the change has been transformative as a kid from a small town on the western edge of the conference has now spent his entire adult life forty seven years under appointment by the north texas conference to places we once called foreign but learned to love as home to settings in all four districts of the annual conference and even on the conference staff and in the episcopal office so to the question then of how god has been creating in me over the course of my ministry i think i simply want to say that god has been creating in me a wideness for god's mercy and that in whatever small ways i have been privileged to share that good news with others in my ministry i have learned several things i need to say i am learning several things because you never quit learning uh... hopefully you never quit running but god has been teaching me that that whenever something really seems to be a tragic thing happening something uh... unexpected and looks like it's going to be just a complete disaster don't panic just just wait and start looking because something wonderful is about to happen and god's going to do most amazing kind of things and there's going to be transformation in the situation in me this is a it's a wonderful lesson that is it applies everywhere in every part of your life and every part of your ministry because god is the one that does the transformation god used some very lonely decision points when i had to decide which way to go so often i'd be in prayer and god would be nowhere nearby and i found if i took the world denying god would meet me around the corner and lead me into great life and great ministry so i found out that god was creating me by a call that was a yes after a yes after a yes and that still continues one of the biggest yeses was in nineteen eighty three because of reading luke's gospel and sojourner's magazine wanting to be an urban person in realizing that being an easy middle-class person in america was not the gospel life for me i asked for an inner city church and the district superintendent said he could still hear my feet on the stairs when that appointment was made i didn't even make it to my car that was a big change and through all of this creating of god and active god in my call in ministry i've been trying to answer the question we ask all those interns at the end of their evaluation what is your theology of ministry i had to make up a word to make mine as a minister i'm the story keeper i don't live the strongest discipleship story but i'm near the lay people who do in the theological education which belongs not to me but to the church helps me polish their story of faith and then link it to the old old story especially in communion so i'm the story my ministry has been uh... a journey of self-discovery uh... some of that through the introspection some of it in connection with others and uh... most of it in the context of work in the local church i've come to know myself better uh... what my gifts and graces are and have grown in my relationship with god and for me that is all a part of growing into the new creation god is creating within me and leading me toward certain and much utilized prayer of confession in our worship around these parts uh... when taken out of confessional language and used for in positive or positive language would say something like this let us love and let us love and do our gods will let us let us receive and live out of our christ law of grace and and let us let us here respond to the cry of the needy i think express like that that sets the stage for any consideration how god over these years has been creating new things in me and i think the word of the idea i would use is that god's great work i think in that in my life and ministry has been uh... becoming more and more a builder of bridges less and less an erector of walls a year and a half ago at the council bishops meeting in junlaska in november of twenty fifteen greg jones was the presenter for us in our learning retreat was not an open council means not officially a meeting is a meeting of the active bishops residential bishops in which we did learn we do learning together once a year and in that meeting he talked about christian social innovation uh... the book is available i believe at the bookstore i thought those three presentations for the council are probably the best things that happen since i've been on the council bishops because we end to expand our minds at least mine in terms of the way in which the church could be the way in which we have to innovate or i would think that the way in which we have to learn to embrace new things but it was so biblically grounded i remain just totally engaged which is which i must tell you is difficult for me but greg i want to tell you that i was totally engaged and so i'm grateful that greg jones who you can read his biography in the and the guy for the annual conference and uh... it's a it's a biography that includes a lot of information and things that greg jones has done but i'm glad that he has come to be with us because i think his three presentations for us will be informative for us and enlightening and i think will strengthen our faith and our witness most importantly strength our witness so you join me in welcoming greg jones to the north texas conference thank you bishop mckay it's a great joy to be with you here and to be able to share in this time of annual conference and back in the dallas area would you pray with me gracious god to send your spirit upon us gathered here speak through me if necessary in spite of me and always be on me that your word might be heard by your people to stay jesus name we pray back in the early days of airplane travel there was a plane that was flying from washington dc to los angeles back in those days it took even longer than it does now the plane was flying over the rockies and it had descended into a very heavy fog and in the midst of that fog as it kept flying and kept flying the pilot finally came over the layout loudspeaker and he said ladies and gentlemen i have good news and bad news first the bad news we're lost now the good news we're two hours ahead of schedule i want to suggest to you that's not a bad description of us in the united states these days in the broader world in the church and especially the united methodist church we're lost but we're moving at a more rapid pace than ever before we used to put instant coffee into a microwave and get impatient at how long it takes used to be called keeping up with the joneses but i'm a jones and even i can't keep up we're moving at warp speed in every direction on social media and in technology and in all sorts of ways and yet in many senses we're lost we're not quite sure where we're going or why or what's at stake we've gotten confused we're looking inward and fighting with each other and we're doing it rapidly in the broader context even before the travails of the last several months in divisions you had authors like nyle fergusson writing a book called the great degeneration two years ago the subtitle is how institutions decay and economies die he's not looking at the church he's looking at the broader secular environment and he takes up fields like economics and politics and education and civil society the law he sees what he says in western culture meaning western europe in the united states he said a great degeneration and it worried him deeply last year uva levine wrote a book called the fractured republic which is argument was not that we just have disagreements where you have two sides he said actually we have a fracturing that's causing multiple forms of division and they're just talking about western culture or american culture they're not even looking at the church of the united methodist church this sense that there's lots of things happening and his yeats might have put it or indeed did put it in a poem a century ago we're finding that the center doesn't hold and so in the midst of all of this we're moving at rapid paces and we're making changes and shifts all the while that we're finding ourselves lost and so in the midst of that there's all kinds of new strategies and and fix it programs and restructuring and all kinds of things that organizations including the church do as if we could fix it with techniques rather than a reorientation to fundamental questions rather than getting clear about where we're headed and why sometimes we say what we really need is better leaders every year that local church in the conference if we could just get better leaders everything would be fine really there are deeper questions for us at stake spend some time with you this morning taking us back to a book and i want to warn you most of your favorite book of the bible and so it may be old news to you all but i want to take us to that book called numbers now in the jewish tradition that book has typically been called in the wilderness and if that was the title of the book it might be your favorite book of the bible because you see when you see the book being numbers it usually gives us all a little ptsd about that time in school when we decided math was not for me whether that was algebra geometry or calculus or somewhere but we get these shivers down our spine when we hear the word numbers but the books more aptly called in the wilderness because the larger horizon of the book is about israel's struggles in the wilderness the christian tradition the name numbers as you know comes from the two censuses that are taken in in the book and so it's focused on those two censuses in the role they play in the book but i want to focus on that sense of being in the wilderness and the chapters between numbers ten and number twenty one numbers twenty one which is david stub shows in his commentary on numbers forms a chiasm that tradition in literature where you have pairs of stories that then work toward a central point in chapter ten and chapter twenty one of numbers you have the israelites in the wilderness and their whining but it's just generalized whining and complaining are we there yet dad why is it taking so long it's just generic moaning the kind of thing you find in ordinary life in a church nothing too significant just kind of generic whining call that d and d prime and then as you get a little closer toward the heart of the story at c and c prime the whining gets more significant now it's focused on the stuff of life we don't have food we don't have bread we don't have water so now we've gone from generic whining to whining about what really matters we're gonna starve we don't have the things that are necessary to sustain human bodies so the complaints have gotten more serious that's c and c prime and then as you get closer to the story in chapters twelve and chapter sixty and seventeen you have complaints about leadership enrollment in in numbers twelve it's a complaint from miriam and erin about moses how come he gets to be the leader what about us interestingly what we learn is the narrator says moses is the one because he's more humble than you are anybody who's been reading along in scriptures got a pause and go moses humility have you read exodus god but the point there is that the humility that's being referred to is about an intimacy with god you see the point is not whether or not moses is a forceful leader but it's about a relationship with god you see we what we often take as humility is more like the kind of passive aggressive behavior that often undermines true leadership the great scene in a christian century cartoon of a little man standing before st peter at a very big desk and st peter has the dossier out in the pearly gates are right behind him and st peter looks down at the little man and he says your application says meek and humble but your dossier says passive aggressive intimacy with god see the closer you are to god the more aware you become that you're not god and so humility the authentic humility is not a false humility or a sense of humiliation it's a recognition that no matter what gifts or talents you've been given you're still small in relation to who god is and so that more intimate you become with god the more humble you are unfortunately in the contemporary church too much of the noise comes from the shallow end of the pool not from people who are intimate with god and have that deep intimacy and thus humility who are being raised up for leadership but rather the people who say look at me and by the way god's somewhere in the background so when merriam and erin complain about leadership the response is get more intimate with god and then you might be equipped for leadership in number sixteen and seventeen you have where the complaints about leadership get really serious and violence ensues and more than two hundred people die in the revolt of choral and the rebellion so you have the complaints from merriam and erin on the one hand and the rebellion that leads to two hundred and fifty deaths and you're at b and b prime but the problems of leadership aren't yet the real heart of the problem facing the israelites that comes in the chapters thirteen and fourteen which is the heart of the chiasm the heart of the whole story of numbers the story of moses sending out the twelve spies moses sends out twelve spies to go out and spy out the promised land they're the first methodists in the bible because they come back and they have a majority report and a minority report the majority report comes from ten of the spies and they say we've looked up ahead we better not go there there are giants up ahead they look so enormous we are like grasshoppers there's no way we can go forward the obstacles they are enormous we can't even risk any of that we had better go back to egypt the minority report comes from joshua and calib they come back and they say we've spied out the promised land it's a land flowing with milk and honey and we trust that if god is calling us to that promised land god will help us navigate the obstacles and so we can go forward trusting god for the future well you know the story the israelites adopt the majority report and they start chanting let's go back to egypt egypt was suffering egypt was slavery egypt was oppression egypt was familiar how often how often we as human beings get used to what's familiar even when we know it's killing us and so the israelites unite up and they say let's go back to egypt my father was a methodist minister said every church he ever served had a back to egypt committee in it but the truth of the matter is every one of us when we're honest with ourselves would acknowledge we have a back to egypt part of our souls we see what god is doing we see where god is calling us and we know that that's where we ought to be going and then we think this is familiar we get anxious we'd rather get stuck or go back to what causes misery for us and for others we get stuck in what augustin called the chains and habits of sin and brokenness rather than trusting god for the future it's only when we with joshua and calib remember that if god is the source of the future that we can trust god to navigate us through any and all obstacles that we might encounter that there is a land flowing with milk and honey so the story of that book called in the wilderness is fundamentally a story about giving up that whining even if it's about bread and water it's about thinking that somehow if we just get the right kinds of techniques of leadership into place it's about rediscovering our mission once the israelites get refocused on their mission that's when the second census takes place and the israelites are set on the journey again once again to the promised land what's narrated in the book of numbers simon cynic has described in a really extraordinary ted talk that if you haven't seen it i recommended to you seventeen minutes long called start with why he manages in that ted talk to weave together martin luther king the right brothers and steve jobs and apple it's an extraordinary accomplishment but his point is that all three of those people actually four if you count both bright brothers but it's all three of those episodes in steve jobs case in the right brothers and with martin luther king what distinguished them and led them to breakthroughs was that they started with why not with what or how in the case of steve jobs and apple apple was a late entrance into the mp3 game del was the pioneer leading mp3 players apple came into it with the introduction of the i-pod they did it with a much clearer sense of why they were doing it and what purpose it would serve for the people who would use it and now you know the word i-pod you don't know the word mp3 in the right brothers case there was a guy at the smithsonian who was far better funded who had far more credentials and reputation the right brothers were bicycle shop people from Dayton Ohio but for the guy in the smithsonia was just with a what and a how in terms of airplanes for the right brothers they had a sense of the why that led them into deeper investigations of birds and how birds fly and aerodynamics and they made the long journey from Dayton to the outer banks of north carolina read david mccullough's book the right brothers it's an extraordinary story of their passion and the obstacles they overcame because they had that sense of a why what cynic points to in martin luther king he said you know there were lots of black preachers who could preach powerfully it wasn't that people gathered on the mall in washington dc in nineteen sixty three because they wanted to hear a great preacher now it was king's ability to tap into that deeper year that sense of why that brought hundreds of thousands of people there that's why the word that he spoke that day moved america because he tapped into that deeper sense of purpose and yearning and called us to what lincoln's would say is the better angels of our nature cynic argues the people showed up that day on the mall of washington not so much to hear king as to hear king give voice to their deepest yearnings and hopes for a better future he tapped into that sense of why well friends i want to suggest to you that if you take the book of numbers and cynic put it in the context of the united methodist church we're mired in a lot of mock and preoccupied with a lot of fights because we've lost our sense of the promised land we don't know how to answer the question of why anymore and so we're stuck wanting to go back to egypt i preach to the church a while back in i told the story of numbers as a context for my sermon later that week i got my favorite letter i've ever gotten from a layperson in a local church he said i don't know if you were if you realize that you were preaching in kairu i admired the honesty he was willing to acknowledge how much the whole fabric of their life had been gotten stuck in egypt and here's the good news though the Wesleyan tradition the people called methodist are better positioned to lay capture to answering that question of why and renewing our sense of mission and pointing us to the promised land if we'll only rediscover the genius that is embedded in our own identity and tradition at life we are better positioned for twenty-first century challenges and opportunities than anybody else if as i'll suggest this afternoon we overcome our amnesia and our nostalgia and recommit to that vision of what it means to bear witness to the god of jesus christ to cultivate thriving communities that are signs for tasting instruments of the reign of god that's what got the people called methodist going in the eighteenth century it's what still happens around the world in pockets here and there signs of hope on the horizon the trouble is that too often we've just lost sight of our own best insights our own best story given up there's a story of united methodism in america history it's not a very good book but it's a great title by charles furgus and about fifty years ago he wrote a book called organizing to beat the devil it was about the triumph of methodists in america but there's a problem it actually diagnosed not just by methodist but by broader people like andy delbanco a secular jewish writer at columbia university has a book called the death of satan his point is and he thinks it's a tremendous loss for american culture but he said we've lost the imaginary for a sense of evil in the world and the loss of that has meant that we've lost a sense of what's really at stake in american culture and so it just seems as if now everything's just a little bit here and a little bit there or who can have the most money who dies with the most toys wins we've lost that larger story that's delbanco story charles taylor's story in a secular age which i don't recommend you read but i do recommend jamey smith's summary of it called how not to be secular taylor's argument is at the beginning of modernity even the non-believers still thought there was a god so you didn't really encounter atheists so much as you might encounter deus who thought god wasn't involved in the world but they still thought there was a god the non-believers taylor says at the end of modernity even the believers act as if there's no god we're essentially practical atheists we organize our churches and our denomination as if we don't expect god to do much in the world you know any dillard's old line about having to wear a crash helmet at church because so much is happening not so much these days became dean of duke divinity school twenty years ago was the first time in a long time that my wife susan wasn't my pastor and so when i hear complaints about the quality of preaching in the world i didn't know anybody was talking about because i heard good sermons every sunday but when we got back to north carolina we had places to visit on sunday mornings and we went to one church and it wasn't a particularly good experience it was just deadly dull i was thinking about any dillard as i listened to the pastor drone on uninspired and uninspiring but i just thought okay it's alright just get through it but on the way out our son our middle child who at the time was uh... about eight years old he looked at me in a very unfortunately loud stage whisper said hey dad i said what he said if the pastor doesn't want to be there why should i i didn't have an answer we not only didn't need crass helmets we needed those neck braces to avoid us from dotting off how can that happen that a story that begins with the creation of a loving god and ends with a vision of a new creation of a new jerusalem where there'll be no more crying or hunger or dying how can we turn that into something so uninteresting it's astonishing and yet we've essentially become practical atheists we've lost that sense of mission that sense of why that ability to know where and what we should be doing what we're called to and how that can lead us forward what would happen if we really believe that the presence and power of god was about to break loose every sunday in worship and the spillover of what broke loose there on sunday morning was going to happen all through the week we just had pentecost what if we really recaptured that sense of what it means to bear witness to the god whose holy spirit is making all things new we're gonna talk this afternoon about what that looks like in terms of social innovation and the transformation of the world and of people's lives but that's what has animated the people called methodists all along the way was that sense of the power and presence of god that could change your life and change my life each and every day could change the community of the church could change the neighborhood around it and indeed could change the world in John Wesley's terms it was spreading scriptural holiness across the land these days it seems we just think we've done okay if we've survived another week we need to recapture that why that larger sense of the story in Taylor's terms we need to recapture the larger narrative from creation to new creation and a vision of what it means to live empowered and inspired toward that new creation that's when transformation really occurs when I was still at Duke as dean I had a visit from a guy we had a center for reconciliation project in East Central Africa and there was a guy I'd met as part of our workshops in center for reconciliation activities in eastern Congo and this guy had come to visit me at Duke when we got that when he came to visit me was in the afternoon he sat down he was starting a university in eastern Congo and I said to him I said uh... tell me about your university he said well last year we had two hundred students this year we have five hundred next year we hope to have eight hundred in a few years we hope to get up to five thousand paused and I thought wow that's pretty audacious I said uh... what makes you anxious or keeps you up at night what is it that causes you to get discouraged he said oh I don't get discouraged I said really? you're building a university in a war zone he said no I don't get discouraged no no I did get discouraged once I thought oh good I was driving through a war zone I got stopped at a checkpoint in the twelve year old who was at the checkpoint had an AK-47 and I've learned that sometimes you can talk adults out of using those kinds of weapons but twelve year olds really like to see what those weapons can do and so I was pretty convinced I was dead he said and when the guy the kid actually let me through the checkpoint I thought oh God has a purpose left for me and so then I decided I better not get discouraged and keep focused on what God's calling me to do and so that hence the university now it was two o'clock in the afternoon I had a faculty meeting earlier that morning so I think I've been discouraged at least four times already that day but that's because I had lapsed back into managing an organization I was no longer focused on the why I was no longer focused on the presence and power of God breaking forth in fresh ways that could lead a university not only to be started but to be undergoing incredible growth in the midst of a war because he saw God at work now circle back to Delbanco to Charles Ferguson you see Kato also told me that they had to start the university in the health clinic because there was a war going on between the forces of God and the forces of evil and he wanted to be sure that people knew the forces of God were more powerful than the forces of evil in the world once Methodist gave up that larger story of God and God's triumph over evil we lost sight of Ferguson's organizing to beat the devil for the last four decades plus we've been preoccupied with organizing for organizing sake we create restructuring proposals and reorganization as if somehow tinkering with the bureaucracy is going to fix what is fundamentally a mission problem we don't have money problems we don't have leadership problems so much as we have a mission problem of having given up on the vision of what it means to bear witness to the power of God the kingdom of God and how that breaks into our world in ways that changes and transforms lives but friends if we don't have to do something new we have to do something renewed we have to connect to who we are in ways that can break forth with possibilities for the future not because of who we are but because of who God is and the more we trust in God to lead us to the promised land the more transformation will occur but I'm gonna warn you it means we're no longer in control and I'll tell you that scares the daylights out of me because I like being a practical atheist I know how to organize stuff I know how to manage it I even know how to work the system to make sure that the meeting comes out most of the time in my way we'll talk some more about that this afternoon but the breakthroughs come not when we trust who we are but when we trust who God is it's always a battle it's never just brand new and yet there used to be an American culture this sense that the people called Methodists were on the move we created organizations and institutions that had a powerful evangelistic impact because it was about introducing people to the good news of the gospel and about the transformation of their lives in that sense Methodism was retrieving a much deeper and longer part of the story that's what my colleague at Duke and good friend Kevin Rowe calls Christianity Surprise he said if you want to know why Christianity spreads so much in the early church it was because they trusted the power of the Holy Spirit to create new organizations and institutions the first health clinics for example were founded by Christians in the second third and fourth centuries why? they took seriously the injunction that we're to care for the widow and the orphan and the poor and that led to a spirit like Kato had in eastern Congo of saying if we trust God we better start things even if it's in a war zone even if it's at an inopportune time a number of years ago I was asked to speak at the sesquicentennial celebration at Valparaiso University I was asked in 2007 it was to speak in 2009 in the meantime you remember there was a little event that happened in 2008 called the crash of the economy so I was getting ready to go see them speak to go speak to them in early 2009 I finally realized I had to figure out what I was going to say so I did some math and some research and I discovered well sesquicentennial in 2009 minus 150 years Valparaiso University had been founded in 1859 by Methodist it's now a Lutheran school Methodist found it we just gave it away we've got a bad habit of doing that sort of thing but a bunch of Methodist in 1859 had founded a college who in their right mind founded a new college in 1859 the country's on the brink of a civil war the economy is in a shambles if they had a long-range planning committee they'd have said this is a dumb time to do anything new we need to hunker down and try to survive but these were folks who were inspired by the gospel and said you know if our people are gonna have a future we need to create institutions that'll show that kind of transformation of life so they founded a university that's happened all across the United States indeed around the world where when people called Methodists have been trusting in the why have seen the vision of God and trusted the power of the Holy Spirit they've been inspired to do all kinds of amazing things and then we shrink that imagination get preoccupied with management and survival and fighting with each other and looking inward and battling with each other because we're no longer looking outward and upward to the God of Jesus Christ we become as secular as the secularists only with less creativity and a greater propensity for fracture in 1904 people called Methodists started a hospital it's a fascinating story it was a story about a hospital founded in Indianapolis there's one in Dallas Houston all over the country high healthcare educational institutions all across the country the story that's fascinating to me is the one in Indianapolis because it came out of young people the upworth league had had a conference and they've been doing a radical thing they've been reading the Bible and they discovered that Jesus said some things about caring for those who were sick and those who were poor and so they went to the annual conference and they went with a check of money they had raised I don't know quite how they raised it whether they'd had a horse and buggy wash or something else but they went there they had raised four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars that's a lot of money for youth to have raised that much money today Bishop McKee would be impressed but in 1904 was even more money and they went and they said here's forty seven hundred and fifty dollars we think the conference needs to build a hospital there was a speech on the floor of the conference from one of the senior members of the conference who said I oppose this proposal when is it going to stop these requests for us to raise money and spend money and start new things it's gotta stop ever hear that speech I'm afraid I might have given it a time or two and then a younger pastor stood up and he said with all due respect if we're about the business of the kingdom I don't think we're ever allowed to stop Jesus didn't ever tell us that we would be done this side of the fullness of the kingdom and this proposal gets to the heart of the gospel of what people of faith are called to be and to do and we need to build this hospital the proposal passed Methodist hospital was built for most of the twentieth century Methodist hospital was the largest health care provider in the state of Indiana until it merged with clarion and now part of indiana university health care all started because some young people read the bible and said you know we probably ought to build a hospital and lo and behold the bishop in the conference came alongside him and said you bet who to funk it like kato in eastern Congo like Valparaiso university like Methodist colleges throughout texas k-12 institutions hospice organizations people of faith have been at the forefront of social innovation not because we learned about it in business school more about that this afternoon but because we've been focused on the why I'm bearing witness to the God who has a land flowing with milk and honey that vision of the kingdom of God the new Jerusalem the power and presence of God made complete that we bear witness to day in and day out when we trust in God more than ourselves few years ago I was reading about Muhammad Yunus right after he won the Nobel Prize and about the Grameen bank I was struck as I was reading about it that's so much of what he described about how they did microfinance in small communities I'm reading and I'm thinking you know this describes a lot this sounds a lot like class meetings and bands the Wesleyan movement and then I went over and I was in Africa in Cote d'Ivoire and I started learning about how the United Methodist women in Cote d'Ivoire organized themselves into small groups for accountability and microfinance selling soap and I began to realize that a secular Muslim from Bangladesh had just won a Nobel Prize for plagiarizing unintentionally from the people called Methodist imagine what could happen in Dallas and in north Texas and in the United States much less in the majority world if we reclaimed our own best insights doing new things not because they're new but because they're part of who we are discovering that Christian social innovation that bears witness to the God of Jesus Christ it's always been what we've done at our best here's the catch my brother and I were sitting there in Cote d'Ivoire Bishop Boney had all of his lay and clergy leaders in the conference around this very large table then he looked at us and he said every one of us around this room are Christians because of health clinics and schools that once were started by the people called Methodist why have you stopped doing these things all of a sudden you became Americans, Christians, I represented the entire western world it felt like it felt like people had just been put right between the eyes he said now it's the Muslims who show that interest it's not the Christians who have that interest what's happened and I said well look at your own people and all they're doing he said yeah we're focused on that but we need support and we need help that's why we wanted to become United Methodists to have that international presence and all we could do together internationally around the world to bear witness to that God do you join us and all of a sudden I felt like I was now expected to speak for everybody all I could say is I hope and pray that we will these days we need a kind of reverse innovation or reverse evangelism where we learn from our brothers and sisters around the world Kato in Eastern Congo the United Methodist women in Cote d'Ivoire about what it means to believe in the power and presence of God the power of the Holy Spirit to descend upon us so we need to wear crash helmets even to annual conference or maybe especially to annual conference if we get focused on the end because at the heart of the story of numbers is the recognition that the end is our beginning and if we can do that then we'll discover not only that we're ahead of schedule but also that we're on course thank you Greg very very much and trust you into the arms the hands of your nephew are there good luck Greg I'm kidding so again thank you are there thanks so Greg thank you and we look forward to hearing you this afternoon as well Matt me off skis in the house he'll be speaking this afternoon as well Matt can you stand where you are so I think you're in the house you were there you are I'm at look forward to hearing you this afternoon as well excuse me this is where we are then on on the agenda we're at the point at which we're going to have some amount of history and archive commission correct David all right now retiree videos right now so if you'll direct yourselves the screen and then we'll look at the retiree videos creating in the church in the local church and the church beyond I have served in extension ministry and observed how got his transform so many lies one specific is I had an experience with a young man who was addicted to drugs helped him process through understanding who God is and how much Jesus loves him that he transformed and changed his life by submitting himself to Christ Jesus and now he is twelve years clean and we celebrate that because only God can make that happen I see how the church has been effectively involved in the lives of the poor at the same time helping those who are lost to be able to attain a life of fruitful life while here on earth using those gifts and graces within those persons to build the God's kingdom here on earth I'm excited about the fact that so so many young people are coming to ministry to serve not only as pastors but to serve in the church and my hope is in them that Christ Jesus will use them to expand and grow our church to be what God created it to be everywhere I look today every church where I have served I see God expanding the ministry and the mission work of all the churches God is changing the focus from being on ourselves to being on others God is always doing a new thing for us at First Plano one of those ways has been in mental health ministry the United Methodist Reporter had an article in the January February twenty seventeen edition about mental illness in which the author Trisha Brown stated that there is still a real stigma associated with mental health issues even in the church God began a good work at First Plano back in two thousand nine that is now wellspring counseling center through sliding scale fees the centers Christian counselors provide mental health services to persons and families that could not otherwise afford them it's exciting to see how God created a passion in the heart of one person Dr. Carolyn Moorer that sparked an entire ministry one that meets a basic human need to be heard and understood and through that process to be helped and healed when I was in seminary as late as nineteen ninety four we were still retrieving information from the green monochrome letters of the the gopher servers wherever they were now we carry around the world's libraries and art museums in our pockets the cultural changes that reality has made in our culture and in our churches is still being discovered obviously it's a challenge that we're all dealing with but God is the crater and this is the continuing creation we can be afraid of it or allow it to immerse us in hope we have no excuse anymore for for being ignorant about injustices happening with regularity to people down the street or about the plight of refugees in Syria or the Sudan we can allow that knowledge to to force us toward our neighbors in love or retreat into the always nearby tombs of fear to follow Jesus means to follow Jesus the fallacies of old confessional statements and denominational rules have become impediments to growing numbers of people and we must all in in our own ways now be about following Jesus to the edges then then right up to the edges of then into the abyss into exactly those same places where Jesus didn't fit in either it's both an alarming time and an exciting time there are new questions about God and hallelujah for that there should always be more questions about God than answers that makes life interesting and it gives substance we are all pioneers in the community of heaven on earth we need more poets and artists and cooks and carpenters and more young people who don't know or care about old rules but who simply want to follow Jesus and I still see God creating a new ministry in the life of especially lay people who come into the church and and learn their ministry learn their place their gifts and graces and I've enjoyed being able to mentor them but also other clergy as well I've worked with the intern program at Perkins over the last twenty five years